Param Bir takes Deshmukh to Supreme Court

New Delhi: Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh on Monday filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking quashing of his transfer to the Home Guard Department and a CBI probe into the alleged 'corrupt malpractices' of Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, 'before evidence is destroyed'.

A 1988-batch IPS officer, Singh, in his plea, repeated the graft charges he made against Deshmukh in a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and also accused him of interfering in police investigations and pressurising him to implicate BJP leaders in the death case of MP Mohan Delkar. The former Mumbai top cop said Deshmukh indulged in 'corrupt malpractices' in transfers and postings in the Home Department.

"The petitioner submits that said Anil Deshmukh had been holding meetings in February 2021 at his residence with police officers including Sachin Waze of Crime Intelligence Unit, Mumbai and Sanjay Patil, ACP Social Service Branch, Mumbai, bypassing their seniors and had instructed them that he had a target to accumulate Rs 100 crore every month and had directed to collect money from various establishments and other sources," it said.

Singh further added that "Anil Deshmukh had been interfering in various investigations and was instructing the police officers to conduct the same in a particular manner as desired by him". 

"Each such act of…Deshmukh in abuse of the official position of the…Home Minister, whether in calling and directly instructing the police officers of lower rank such as…Waze or …Patil for his malicious intent of extorting money from establishments across Mumbai and from other sources, or whether in interfering in the investigations & directing the same to be conducted in a particular manner, or whether indulging in corrupt malpractices in posting/transfers of officers, cannot be countenanced or justified in any democratic State", said the plea, adding this warrants fair investigation by the central probe agency. Singh claimed that he "brought" Deshmukh's "corrupt practices…in the knowledge of the senior leaders and the…Chief Minister of…Maharashtra" but "immediately thereafter, on 17.03.2021", an order was issued transferring him from the post of Mumbai Police Commissioner to the Home Guard Department "in an arbitrary and illegal manner without the completion of the minimum fixed tenure of two years".